In the Dark

An inconclusive general election, mass protests about electoral reform, another stock market crash – Britain’s got the jitters. I think it’s time for a bit of old-fashioned stoicism. In fact, yesterday, when I saw a lot of comments on the unprecedented politicial situation facing Britain, I changed my facebook image to the following poster dating from the Second World War.

I meant it as a bit of a joke but it got me thinking about parallels between the UK’s current situation and that of this month 70 years ago when we faced problems of an altogether different magnitude.

I’m no historian so I’ll just include an excerpt from Simon Schama‘s BBC TV series A History of Britain. The last programme of the series cleverly follows the story of the Second World War through the eyes of two very different Englishmen, George Orwell and Winston Churchill. Here Schama describes how close this nation came, in May 1940, to doing a deal with Hitler. Meeting after meeting behind closed doors in Whitehall took place until eventually Churchill held sway. There was no to be no surrender.

Of course the problems facing the nation in 1940 make those facing us now pale into insignificance, so I’m not going to push the parallel too far. Nevertheless, 70 years on, we once again have lengthy and no doubt heated secret negotiations whose outcome is still by no means certain, but which will probably alter the political landscape of this country for many years to come. This time it’s not so much a matter of danger, but one of opportunity. I think change is in the air, and I also think we need it.

Another parallel is that the war in Europe came to an end almost exactly five years after the installation of Churchill as Prime Minister. Victory in Europe (VE) Day, which marks the anniversary unconditional surrender of the Germans on May 8th 1945, was yesterday. In fact the leaders of all three political parties took time out from their haggling to take part in the commemoration ceremony. Soon after the end of the War, on July 5th 1945, a General Election was held that yielded a Labour landslide and booted Churchill out of office. I don’t think that people were ungrateful, just that their wartime experiences made them aspire to a more progressive vision of the future than the old guard could provide. Clement Attlee‘s government took over a country bankrupted by war, with most of its cities in ruins, and with terrible labour shortages. Not  surprisingly given that it was beset by so many problems, the Attlee government struggled to deliver what it set out to do. Nevertheless, it gave us – amongst other things – a National Health Service and a Welfare State that, to me, are emblematic of the “real” Britain.

I think Schama gets it exactly right in the clip when he talks about the War not just being about Britain as a physical entity but about much more abstract notions, such as freedom and democracy. We weren’t just fighting the Germans, we were fighting Nazism and the threat it posed to the liberties the British people had taken hundreds of years to win. The pricewas very heavy, but it was certainly worth paying. I too, would rather have died fighting than live under Fascism. My only worry would have been whether I had it in me to show the courage and resourcefulness needed to meet the challenge.

This all brings me to the question of what “Britain” actually represents in the modern age.  The BNP present their views as a vision of Britishness, but most British people find their attitudes repugnant.  Not only did they fail to win any seats at the General Election, they also lost all their council representation in Barking, previously thought to be a stronghold. The people of Barking clearly aren’t as mad as they’ve been portrayed.

We probably have very different views on many aspects of our national identity – or even  if there is such a thing at all –  but we can probably agree on, as Schama puts it in the clip, “freedom, democracy, and the rule of law”. Outside that core, people clearly differ. For myself, I would add a sense of social justice and compassion, which is why the Welfare State and NHS  are so important to me.

To me, inclusiveness (whether cultural, religious, racial, or whatever) is also essential to what it means to be British, but that view clearly isn’t shared by everyone. Immigration is a hot potato in British politics these days, a fact  that surprises given our existence as a mongrel nation that has been enriched over the centuries by people coming here from elsewhere. I suppose its natural that people are suspicious of strangers, and this can be exploited by unscrupulous people looking for scapegoats, but we should remember, for example,  that sixty years ago we were desperate to persuade people from the West Indies to move here in order to deal with  the post-war  labour shortage. Nowadays we too need immigration to deal with shortages of skilled labour and to counteract the economic effects of our rapidly ageing population.  I can’t imagine what state our universities would be in if it weren’t for the many excellent researchers who have come here from all round the world, and that also goes for the UK as a whole.I’m not trying to say that immigration is a non-issue, just that it’s neither new nor something we need to panic about. We can cope with it.

After all, we’re British.